Lawyer pals launch business they hope will be the Netflix of neckties

Entrepeneuer Scott Tindle is hoping his business becomes the Netflix of ties. (Press-Register/Victor Calhoun)

MOBILE, Alabama -- Scott Tindle doesn't consider himself a particularly stylish dresser, but his fledgling company might help others do just that.

Tindle and his partner, David Powers, recently launched Tie Try LLC, a company that marries the Netflix business model with the necktie.

In less than three weeks, the company already has a few dozen subscribers paying between $12 and $30 a month, and Tindle said the business is on its way to beating first-month projections.

Tindle and Powers met at Auburn University and ended up going to law school together at the University of Alabama. Powers is now a lawyer in Washington, D.C., while Tindle is the in-house counsel for a company in Mobile.

The two had long wanted to start a company, and about a year ago they got their inspiration when they watched an episode of the entrepreneur reality show "Shark Tank," which featured a Netflix-like business for children's toys.

"The same way a kid doesn't want to play with the same toy all the time, a man doesn't want to wear the same tie," Tindle said. "But it can be so expensive getting new ties all the time."

The subscription model is old hat to anyone familiar with Netflix's red envelopes. A customer will sign on at www.tietry.com, paying for an account entitling him to anywhere from one to five ties at a time. The customer then clicks on pictures of the ties favored, adding them to his queue.

Tie Try will mail the ties to the customer along with a stamped return envelope. The customer can keep the tie as long as he wants, and as soon as he mails it back, Tie Try sends the next one in the queue.

Tindle and Powers aren't the first to marry the Netflix model to fashion. Bag Borrow or Steal, a Seattle company founded in 2004, does the same thing with handbags, and New York-based Rent the Runway does it with designer dresses. There's even another version for neckwear out there -- www.tiesociety.com.

The company got an unexpected dose of publicity a few weeks before it launched, when a character on the sitcom "The League" started a fictional business called Neckflix.

Tindle and Powers spent nearly a year discussing the plan before launching it in early January. The biggest challenge, Tindle said, was that they both had day jobs they loved.

"Neither of us wanted to put our jobs on the back burner," he said.

Tindle found help and inspiration from his wife, Beth. A recruiter for Auburn by day, she also runs an online graphic design business. "She already had the mindset of, when you get off your day job you start your second job," Tindle said.

The biggest initial expense was building up a catalogue of ties. The company wanted to carry high-end neckware -- Calvin Klein, Brooks Brothers, Giorgio Armani -- but couldn't afford to pay retail and still make money, Tindle said. Tie Try brokered deals with wholesalers and distribution centers to get its ties at a discount.

And at times, the owners turned to less traditional purchasing methods.

"One girl bought a bunch of ties for her boyfriend, but he broke up with her before she could give them to him," Tindle said. "They were just sitting in her closet, and she wanted to get rid of them."

The company has about 200 ties right now, with plans to add another 150 this month, Tindle said. One of the more fun parts of the business is discovering smaller, regional tie-makers to add to the list, he said.

"We would never send out a tie that neither of us would wear in front of a client," he said.

Tindle and his wife use their home as a warehouse and mailing depot, and the two of them use a gentle hand-treating process to clean ties between wearers. He and Powers hope to quickly grow to the point where they can rent an office and hire a manager to run the day-to-day operations.

"There are 10 million men who wear a tie to work every day," Tindle said. "If we can get just 1 percent, that's 100,000 subscribers. We think the sky is the limit with this idea."